Chapman Way (4:59)

Thanks so much for doing the show. I figured we'd just start at the top. You guys had put out Wild Wild Country. It's a huge hit, it won several Emmys, and I imagine if I'm you, I'm facing a certain amount of pressure to find like another amazing story that can live up to the success of Wild Wild Country. I mean, talk to me about what happened to you guys after that show came out and what you were hoping to do in finding your next project.

Maclain Way (5:27)

So yeah, 2018 wild wild country we made Wawa country and I was saying we did it as like a kind of like a low budget indie doc series with the Duplass Brothers. And, you know, wasn't expecting too much out of it, was hoping that some people would see it and like it. And within a few weeks, kind of caught fire a little bit. And, like, Saturday Night Live was doing skits on it, and there was spoofs all over and kind of became more popular than we imagined. And so immediately you're kind of thinking, like, all right, what do we want to do next? What are we going to follow that up with? And we were kind of patient. We kind of wanted to sit and wait and find the right story. So kind of what we did is we kind of partnered up with Netflix to just kind of keep busy. And we kind of launched a sports anthology series called Untold. And for us, it was like a great way to work with a lot of great editors, a lot of great DPs. Mac and I got the show, run this series and got to hire great directors to do episodes and see how other filmmakers work, and basically spent about three years launching the first two volumes of Untold. And then during that time, we constantly have our ears and eyes out for. All right, but what's something that's like, maybe a little bit more in our esthetic, what's something that suits our storytelling? And we had a vague, vague memory of this story from 2013, where, you know, our country's preeminent Elvis and perhaps impersonator had been arrested for trying to assassinate President Barack Obama. And it was such a bizarre headline that it always kind of stayed with us. And it wasn't really until, like, 2021 that Mac and I flew out the Tupelo to meet with Paul Kevin Curtis, the. The Elvis impersonator who had been arrested, and quickly realized that there was a lot more to this story than had kind of been reported on at the time. A lot of twists and turns, and quickly felt like this would be kind of like a worthy successor slash follow up to Wawa country and exploring a lot of the same themes and things that interested us as filmmakers.

Chapman Way (7:27)

Like, on your first visit down there, what was the experience of Tupelo? Like, what were you seeing and who were you meeting?

Interviewee (7:34)

Yeah, it did. Interesting, because Chap. I was trying to think. I don't think that we've really shot a lot in the south before this, so it was really like our first time spending an extended period of time. I think, you know, we've shot in and out of Georgia and Atlanta, but, like, you know, this is like a different kind of version of the south, you know, in a way, it's very. It's not so urban, you know. And so, you know, you fly into Memphis and then you kind of take like that 90 minute drive, you know, and. And you cross the, you know, the little state border there from Tennessee into the Mississippi's. And I. I always likened it to, like, kind of finding this weird in Big Fish, that movie where like, Ewan McGregor walks in and he sees this town that's like literally off the beaten path, and the shoes are kind of like hung over the telephone wire, and it is kind of a place that you go and like, theoretically, it felt like you stay forever. Like, it just felt like kind of removed from. From. It was just its own thing. Like, it. And then for us, there was just like. I remember one of our first experiences was like someone had asked us, like, have you been to the birthplace yet? And I was like, the birthplace? I didn't know what they were getting at. And they're like, oh, Elvis Presley's birthplace. And I knew that Elvis had been born there before I had gone there. But it was just like that, like, the birthplace, like, that's all they need to refer to for, you know, for everyone to know what they're talking about. And so there was just like all that going on. And then I think the other thing that was really interesting is, like, you arrive in a town like Tupelo. It's very small. This wasn't the first time that we had been there, but, you know, the second or third time we're coming back with a crew, we're starting production. And, you know, you bring like eight people with you, right? Like our whole crew that we work with on a lot of our shoots, like really close collaborators. But people notice you more when there's eight of you, or you have, you know, production vans and you have cameras and tripods and you're going out and you're filming the town. And everyone would kind of, in a very friendly way, ask us what we were doing. And, you know, at first it's like I almost like winced a little bit when I would tell them we're doing the 2013 presidential assassination story. Just because I thought being a small town, we kind of had that experience in Antelope, Oregon. To be honest, when we tell Antelope and say we're doing the Rash Nishi story, they'd be. They didn't have a great reaction to it. They didn't like that story. They didn't want that covered. But here in Tupelo, it almost felt like the exact opposite. Like, everyone's eyes got really big, they got really excited, and then they would, like, contribute very helpful information to us. Like, I'm not even kidding. Like, oh, my God, you got to talk to my father in law. He was the guy that, like, arrested Kevin when, blah, blah, blah. Or like, you got to talk to my best friend's sister. Like, she performed with Everett Dutchkey at one of these open mics. Like, you got to know that. And like, literally that was almost the beginning of us shooting these, like, town local interviews, which we. We haven't really done that in many documentaries, in any documentary, actually. And this was kind of the beginning of like, oh, we need the town of Tupelo to be a character itself. And that's where that started.

Narrator (10:37)

I asked the ways why they thought the residents of Tupelo were so eager to participate in the dock, considering that the rice and scandal doesn't shine the most flattering light on the town. But they said the people of Tupelo were proud of their eccentricities and not afraid to flaunt them.

Maclain Way (10:52)

The second thing we quickly realized is just like, what a skill it is in the style telling stories and what incredible storytellers they are. And, you know, we would go and have dinners with our subjects and hang out in their backyards and they would make barbecue and foods and soups, and we would just hang out around a fire and literally our subjects would just share stories with us. And they're animated and these stories are heightened and they're embellished and sometimes a little bit of fiction is thrown in. And so for Mac and I, as documentary filmmakers and storytellers, we were like, Mac and I realized that we could, like, really lean in and have this tension between fact and fiction kind of be at the heart of the story.

Interviewee (11:32)

Again, I'll compare it to Antelope, Oregon, from Wild Wild country, which, like, that town was very much like, we don't like outsiders, period. Like, they didn't like the rationees, but they also didn't like us from California necessarily. You know, like, so that was their attitude. Tupelo was. It's such a performative town. And I do think that comes from being the birthplace of Elvis Presley. Like, they and I would wear it proudly too. Like, we are the only town that could have birthed the king of rock and roll from this shotgun shack, risen to the fame that he did, and transformed the world as we know it. But that extends in so many different ways. Like, Tupelo has, like, six performing arts centers. This was a little bit of a cultural shock for me. But, like, they have an. In my opinion or in my experience, what. I grew up with so many more churches than where I grew up in Southern California. But the sermons, the pastors, like, it's all very much like a big show of storytelling. So when we went there with cameras, like, to tell this story in a really good way, I think people were just excited by the camera and intrigued by it and didn't necessarily shy away, like, what? Releasing the series has been interesting because there's been so many comments made about, like, oh, my God, are these people real? Are these people real? And, like, oh, maybe they're, like, hamming it up or being, like, extra for these cameras. And I swear, like, in our experience, like, we felt like in the edit, we were, like, toning down the craziness because it was, like, so wild that sometimes, like, we didn't want to, like, lose control of the series just in that regard. So that was certainly our experience.

Chapman Way (13:07)

I was going to ask whether people there thought that the true story or the real story had been accurately told before, or whether they were coming to you to say, yeah, people are missing things. People have missed key details in this story. They haven't talked to this person or that person. Did you have that sense too? Or did it seem like, no, we're just interested in telling this story again because it's really good.

Interviewee (13:31)

You know, what's interesting is.

Maclain Way (13:35)

I almost feel like it was the opposite. I almost feel like a lot of town locals knew the broad strokes of the story, but were actually coming to us to be like, what have you uncovered? What do you know? Like, there's such a strange. Like, this story exists in such a strange universe. Like, what have. What can you explain to us? And so it was a little bit of a mutual. We would share kind of what we were learning, and then that would, you know, trigger ideas, stories, things they remembered. Oh, that. That reminds me when I first met Kevin, or that reminds me when I took karate classes at Everett Dusky's dojo. And so it was a little bit of, like, a mutual collaboration, I feel like, between us doing a little bit of investigative work and then bringing it to the town and then the town kind of taking it from there.

Narrator (14:19)

We'll be right back with more from the Way Brothers and their new Netflix documentary series, the Kings of Tupelo.

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Narrator (16:35)

In some ways, the Kings of Tupelo is a case study of a conspiracy theory. The Way's interest in Kevin's story roughly coincided with the rise of QAnon, which, if you're unfamiliar, claimed that a secret cabal of powerful elites was running a global child trafficking ring and engaging in satanic rituals. They saw Kevin's body parts conspiracy as a way to explore how a conspiracy theorist sees the world.

Maclain Way (17:00)

A big part of making this for Mac and I was like to kind of dive into the belly of the beast, so to speak, and dive into someone who goes down a rabbit hole and hear from them what that experience is and then try and do it in a way that doesn't cast judgment or doesn't admonish them, but really try to learn, for better or worse, what this conspiracy journey provides for them. And spending a lot of time with Kevin, it became apparent to me, and I think, Mac, as well, that I think if you're someone who's not maybe happy with your career or your life or where you're at, or you're bored or there's, you know, you're not quite achieving what you wanted to, I think that going down a conspiracy rabbit hole and, and fighting right and wrong and being able to be the hero of your own story, I think is very attractive to a lot of people. And I think conspiracies give people a lot of self importance, a lot of validation, a lot of meaning. So I think it was all those things that probably drew Kevin into this. I mean, he was working as a janitor slash cleaner, you know, cleaning toilets a little bit. So I can only imagine if you're doing that and then you find a severed head and a morgue, that, at least to me, would seem like a lot more of an exciting journey to go on than what I'm doing elsewise.

Chapman Way (18:24)

My dad was a psychiatrist, and so naturally I tend to view human nature through the lens of diagnosis. And this documentary, of course, had me wondering, gee, it seems like he could be diagnosed with something. I wondered, were people trying to get him medical attention in town or. Or were they just kind of, oh, well, that's Kevin.

Interviewee (18:45)

It's a good question. And it's probably one of the areas that, like, there was a lot of different versions of this story that we, like, ran across, but, like, this particular area does have, like, a lot of different opinions, you know, But I will say that, like, our experience making this was that people like his brother Jack, they felt like they were trying to always help Kevin. Like, not just maybe in this area of seeing a psychiatrist or something like that, but just generally, like, helping Kevin out as, as, as a family member would as he kind of goes through this journey.

Narrator (19:20)

Chapman added that Kevin had been hospitalized for mental illness in the past and received multiple diagnoses from different doctors, but medication didn't agree with him.

Maclain Way (19:29)

He said something really interesting. He said that it zombified him. And he said it also took away the beautiful parts of me. He said he couldn't, wasn't creative anymore, he couldn't write music anymore. And sure, he wasn't creating problems or anything. It was very quiet. But he said it took away the beautiful parts of me. And I just thought that was really, really interesting.

Chapman Way (19:48)

Then, of course, this new character, Everett, Dusty or Dutch Key or Douchey or whatever people call him in town, kind of appears on the scene very mysteriously, but they almost immediately develop, like, a real contempt for each other that really blossoms into, like a full blown feud. One of the questions I had, why exactly these two men came to hate each other so much. What were your thoughts about that?

Interviewee (20:19)

I think that Everett fashioned himself as someone who was occupied with, like, big grand conspiracies here. Big grand fights of right and wrong. Everett claims that he was a CIA operative that went overseas, conducted missions, had found himself back in Tupelo, Mississippi, trying to return to a normal life. You know, so in a similar way, Kevin is also a conspiracy theorist fighting grand, epic battles of right and wrong, albeit maybe on a smaller scale than Everett's international conspiracy. Kevin's conspiracy is a little bit more based specifically in Tupelo, specifically with funeral home directors, specifically with doctors or hospitals that possibly participate in the trafficking of body parts. That's kind of Kevin's conspiracy theory. And so it was kind of this, like, just always missing each other. You know, they could never really, like, get on the same page in terms of their worldview, in terms of how they viewed right and wrong and what ought to be done about it. And so what. What initially developed is like Cable Guy, right? Cable Guy is like a film with like, Jim Carrey and Matthew Brodwick, and you have one character that's trying to get the attention or friendship or. Or teaming of another one, and the other one's just kind of pushing it away, pushing it away, pushing it away. Now, Kevin is someone who is relentless in his journey to expose what he thinks is wrong. It was part of why it was theoretically easy to kind of set him up for this larger crime that he'd later get arrested for. But I think that that friction, what started as maybe just like what would normally be an awkward relationship between two human beings just kind of kept elevating because I don't think that either were capable of ignoring one another. But I'm curious what you have to say too, Jeff.

Maclain Way (22:09)

I don't. I always felt like what made the feud unique was that it was kind of not really a feud. Like, Kevin kind of admired Everett and his intelligence and his talent as a musician and his brain and how smart he was when it came to conspiracies and government. And, you know, Everett was running for state congress and Kevin had, you know, couldn't only dream of becoming a politician. I mean, and so for us, it was a very unique dynamic between them where Kevin admired Everett. And Everett kind of looked at Kevin as like a little brother that he wanted, like, nothing to do with and kept pushing him away. And these two quickly became very intertwined. I mean, talking to Everett, he was just getting furious because Kevin, who's an Elvis impersonator, started impersonating him, started dressing up like him around town, started Photoshopping his head on Everett's photos on Facebook, started doing karate because Everett was a karate instructor. And so it was just a very strange dynamic between the two of them that soon blossomed into, like, this absolute feud full of madness.

Chapman Way (23:15)

One of the questions I think people are left with intentionally in the show is why exactly, Everett wound up putting Ryson in those letters. Like, especially because it was so easy for the FBI to trace it back to him. Why do you think he put Ryson in those letters?

Maclain Way (23:38)

You know, when we first started on this project, there was the very kind of simple answer, which was, oh, he had this feud with Kevin, and he wanted to frame Kevin. He wanted to get rid of Kevin. What was most fascinating to us as we kind of dove into it and interviewed the FBI, did our own little investigations, talked to everyone, was it was apparent that Kevin was just really a pawned in a bigger crime that Everett was committing. And Everett, you know, from the FBI's point of view, they uncovered that he had deep hatred for political figures. You know, he had run against Steve Holland, like I said, In 2007, state Congress lost. Kind of felt like he got discarded from the Republican Party. And so Senator Roger Wicker, who was a Republican senator sitting senator today, was one of the initial supporters of his campaign. And I know Everett. It's mentioned that Everett felt like he was maybe abandoned by Senator Roger Wicker after that. Roger Wicker gets, you know, ricin in the mail, and then they uncover that Steve Holland's mother gets rice in the mail, and FBI uncovers an email where Everett said, you know, I really wanted to kill Steve Holland, but I knew it hurt him more to kill his mom because, you know, Holland was, quote, unquote, a mama's boy of extraordinary proposals. Portions is. Is what he says himself. And then, you know, we learned from Kevin's wife that Everett was extremely conservative and had a deep hatred for President Obama and felt like Obama was ruining the country. And so what originally started as kind of like a silly, outrageous feud quickly kind of gave us more of like a deeper look and psychological snapshot of someone who possibly wants to assassinate politicians.

Narrator (25:26)

Early in the film Everett Dusky claims he spent several years in the CIA before moving to Tupelo. He also hints that his ricin plot was part of a larger covert government operation, though there's no evidence to support this.

Chapman Way (25:40)

Did you ever find any evidence that he had, in fact, spent any time in the CIA?

Interviewee (25:46)

I never found any hard evidence that he had worked for the CIA. But I do know that's a very convenient thing because no one can really determine whether you work for the CIA.

Maclain Way (25:55)

So during our research process, we talked to one of the FBI investigators who was deeply involved in this investigation and, you know, who has connections to CIA. And so, you know, we asked him, hey, we're talking to Everett Dusky. You know, he claims that he was a counterintelligence operative for the CIA. And he paused on. Everybody paused. And he looked at me and he said, if Everett Dusky is a CIA operative, then I'm a NASA astronaut. And I said, okay, got it. Makes sense. And so that was about as far as our investigative look into that effort. CIA claims. But who knows?

Interviewee (26:30)

Maybe.

Maclain Way (26:30)

I mean, maybe he is the perfect weapon. Maybe, like the karate instructor in. In Tupelo is Mississippi is the person you least imagine to be some sort of operative. So it's not beyond the realm of imagination, but the FBI investigator that we talked to did not think it was highly like them.

Narrator (26:51)

We'll be right back with more from the Way Brothers and their new Netflix documentary series, the Kings of Tupelo.

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Narrator (29:07)

After his conviction, Everett was initially sent to ADX in Florence, Colorado, the supermax prison known for high profile inmates like cartel boss El Chapo Guzman and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers. ADX inmates aren't allowed to make public statements or give interviews to the press, but just as the Ways began their project, Everett was transferred to a high security prison in Tucson, which does allow interviews, albeit with strict oversight. The Ways recorded dozens of phone interviews with him for the film, and was.

Chapman Way (29:40)

He a willing participant in the doc? Was he really eager to participate or was he a tougher gat at first.

Interviewee (29:46)

I'd say a little hesitant and kind of ran us through, I think, a little bit of some tests. You know, Everett was weirdly a combination of extremely open and extremely forthright about things that you would assume he would try to conceal in some way as long as it fit within a broader narrative that he occasionally had constructed. So it's a very disorienting experience interviewing him, to be honest, a fascinating one where I simultaneously felt like I wasn't ever really getting close to the ultimate truth. But then through that process, like I did feel like I got to know who this guy was.

Chapman Way (30:24)

Kevin seems, at least in the documentary to be in a better place than he was, at least in the midst of his conspiracy theory days where he's locked into this idea that these body parts are being trafficked from the medical center all around the country. And you also get the sense that maybe this ricin conspiracy thing was actually a good thing for his life. It improved things like he was going on the Today show and he's being talked about on Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart's show. And now, of course, he's in a NETFLIX special docu series, which for many people I think is like synonymous with I'm now officially famous. So, like, what did you think about the effect that the rice and conspiracy had on Kevin's life?

Maclain Way (31:09)

I know talking to his kids and his wife. I mean, he spent last years, this was 2013 and has spent, you know, the last 10 years really trying to repair a lot of relationships. They all talked about how far he's come kind of since this whole ordeal and that he was kind of ready to put the conspiracy life behind him, which is kind of where our documentary was kind of ending that was kind of the end. And then slowly towards the end of filming, you know, Kevin was starting to hint to us in, in subtle ways that he was having second thoughts about Everett Dusky and his involvement in this crime. And I didn't quite know what he was getting at until finally, a couple months later, I finally realized, I think Kevin's trying to tell us that he thinks Everett's innocent. And so we kind of started talking to him and sure enough, as we asked him questions, kind of dove into it with him. Kevin had come to this ultimate conclusion that he felt Everett Dusky was framed, framing him. And I just felt like it was too big of a revelation to not include in the story and that it wouldn't have felt honest or real to not include where Kevin ultimately ended up. You know, to us, it's one of our maybe favorite sections in the movie. You know, it's intercut between ever talking and Kevin talking. Kevin is saying Everett's innocent. Everett wants no part of Kevin at all. Even though Kevin is saying that Everett's innocent, it still bugs Everett. And so to us, it's kind of perfectly encapsulated, kind of the dynamics between these two.

Narrator (32:52)

At one point in the series, Kevin Curtis feels validated when several high profile cases revealed that funeral homes and medical centers in cities like Detroit, Chicago and LA had been involved in the illicit trade of human remains. Still, the ways didn't know how audiences would react to Kevin's conspiracy.

Interviewee (33:10)

We just didn't know or we would change. You know what I mean? I think it would like, it would start with like, I don't think they're gonna believe any of this to like, oh, maybe they will believe parts of it. Or, like, some will believe Kevin and then others will think, no, no way. So the guy's making it all up. Like, I don't know. And I don't know, maybe I'm in a bubble. But I would say, like, a shockingly high number of people think Kevin's right. Like, think that Kevin, like, has been vindicated, like, went on his journey, like, are applauding him, you know, which it's nice because we. We love Kevin, like, and cat for Kevin. Like, from day one, Kevin, he didn't control any of the interview questions. Like, he didn't ask the see a single cut. He watched it on Netflix like everyone else. Like, probably one of the most, like, open book character subjects we've ever dealt with. So Kevin, I'm honest in the sense that, like, he won me over just as a human being, you know, But I. That still. I still didn't know how people would necessarily react to him. And I'd say, man, the guy's getting some flowers right now that I like. I don't know if I saw that coming, but. But it. But it's happening. I mean, it's certainly happened the last. Last week it's been on.

Chapman Way (34:15)

I was curious if there was something that you guys really tried to make fit but just didn't work and wound up on the cutting room floor, but that you wish, in an ideal world, might have made the cut.

Interviewee (34:26)

I think that just, like, I don't know, maybe I'm in my own bubble, but, like, Everett's. The detail of Everett's own conspiracy would take, like, two and a half hours, three hours of documentary filmmaking, which I'm sure no one would really want to watch, but, like, there always was, like, a striving torch that, you know, to, like, really unlock it. I think ultimately with, like, run times and just viewer habits. Like, you do have to succinctly give a synopsis of it. But if you could follow the A to B to C to D of how Everett has constructed this, like, really complex excuse of why he did the things he did, it'd be very interesting to a small, small percentage of the audience, but interesting to only us.

Maclain Way (35:17)

If.

Chapman Way (35:18)

Only because you guys start the film with that beautiful quote from Faulkner via Steve Holland, which is, to understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi. And no need to get too philosophical, but having spent some years in Tupelo, do you feel like you understand the world any better or in a new way, or is it just the same world to you?

Maclain Way (35:44)

That's a good question. It's a little bit of the same world. But how I started this interview, I do have admiration for how they are proud of their uniqueness and their eccentricities. Something for me as a human was like, you know, that's pretty cool thing to embrace. We are all unique. We're all different. We're all weird. Mac and I are weird. We spent three and a half years on this story. So everyone always says these people are weird, but Mac and I are like, well, we spent, you know, three years obsessively documenting it. Maybe we're the weirdest ones here possibly. But, yeah, also, I think the cool thing about spending time in the south.

Interviewee (36:17)

Is, like, they get off their phones.

Maclain Way (36:19)

They hang out, they eat, they talk, they share stories, they, they, you know, they, they commune together. And so that, to me, is something I would like to see a lot more of and something that I really took to heart.

Interviewee (36:30)

Yeah, I would say, like, I, I would not go so far to say that I understand the world, but I do think we have. We understand the world a little bit better than before when we started this process, you know, But I think that that is just a unique experience of spending so much time in this town, spending so much time with these people, and having a blast working with them all. Like, I, I, I. It's like we, you kind of. One of your first questions was like, hey, how do we go from on, from wild, wild country to, to this? And, like, one of the important series that we worked on in between these two was Untold, which is a sports series, but that world has agents and managers of athletes, and you're dealing with millionaires, like, and it's its own complex web of politics and emails and phone calls and meetings. And, like, there was something that I personally craved about taking a flight to Memphis and driving 90 minutes to Tupelo, Mississippi, Mississippi, and just sitting down and having, like, very long interviews and conversations and dinners with these people to try to. And they made me understand things that I have not understood before, you know, and so that was a very, very unique experience and one that we're incredibly thankful for.

Chapman Way (37:44)

Well, that's our time. But thank you both so much for agreeing to the interview and I really enjoyed the film. It seems like a lot of people are also enjoying it. So I'm just very grateful to the two of you and congrats on a great job.

Interviewee (37:58)

Awesome, great conversation. Thanks so much for having us on.

Maclain Way (38:00)

Jed. Yeah, this was really fun to talk about. Thank you.

Narrator (38:05)

Thanks for listening to that conversation with the way brothers, I hope you enjoyed it. We'll be back next week with another true crime story from the South.

Advertiser (38:23)

I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends and together we have the podcast Office Ladies where we rewatched every single episode of the Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests and lots of laughs.

Maclain Way (38:37)

Guess who's sitting next to me?

Advertiser (38:39)

Steve.

Advertiser (38:41)

It is my girl in the studio. Every Wednesday we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the Office and our friendship with brand new guests and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. Comments so join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus on Mondays we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.